A New York startup has raised $5.5 million to deliver technical training to would-be software developers in classrooms in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Charles River Ventures and Matrix Partners led the Series A investment in Flatiron School Inc., joined by Box Group and individual angel investors, co-founder and president Adam Enbar said.

The company charges $12,000 tuition for four-month, immersive programs in Web and mobile programming, covering such languages as Ruby, Javascript and HTML5, or Objective C, and tools and resources for developers like Facebook Open Graph or StackOverflow. Read More »

What does it take to grab the attention of a room full of tech investors and entrepreneurs sipping red wine and gin and tonics?

A little Lady Gaga never hurt.

On a recent evening, New York City’s self-proclaimed all-tech a cappella group silenced a crowd filled with venture capital investors—a rare feat under any circumstances—at the annual DFJ Gotham Ventures dinner at the Standard Hotel just by singing on pitch without accompaniment.

They call themselves NYC#. Depending on the crowd, the superscripted # can stand for either sharp or hashtag. Singers range in age from 26 to 33 years old and hail from companies within the growing New York tech scene, such as Foursquare and the Startup Institute of New York. In their day job, they work in digital marketing, sales and UX design. Read More »

This photo illustration shows the web pages of Yahoo and Tumblr on a computer screen.

Yahoo’s acquisition of New York-based Tumblr—as well as YahooYHOO -1.48%’s announcement that it will open a 500-person office in Times Square—has given the Big Apple tech scene a fresh jolt. But even before those recent moves, more tech talent has been flocking to New York, said panelists speaking Wednesday morning at WSJ Tech Cafe, an event organized by The Wall Street Journal that’s taking place a couple of blocks south of Google’s headquarters in Chelsea. Read More »

Dennis Crowley, co-founder and chief executive officer at Foursquare Labs Inc., speaks during an interview at the South By Southwest Conference in Austin, Texas, U.S., in March.

By Justin Rocket Silverman

All the world isn't a stage — it's more like a video game.

That was the message from two of the tech world's most inventive minds: Yancey Strickler, co-founder of Kickstarter and Dennis Crowley, co-founder of Foursquare.

“The Zelda games were a big influence on how I saw the city,” Mr. Crowley told scores of game designers, programmers and players at this weekend’s Twofivesix conference in Brooklyn.

Mr. Crowley, whose company allows users to “check in” to locations via smartphone, went on to wonder, “Can you apply that magical experience you have in those games and bring them out into the real world?” Read More »

For some employees at Yahoo’s offices in Sunnyvale, New York City and elsewhere, style has graduated from the laid-back look associated with Internet startups to a more polished presentation.

“I did try out the ‘Hey, I work at an Internet company’ look,” said Erin McPherson, VP of Yahoo Video, who wore Chuck Taylors, jeans and a rockabilly plaid shirt when she first joined the company. “That whole day I felt awkward, so I’ve gone back to what works for me, which is a tailored, structured look.”

“That was also the era of the Ping-Pong table and everyone’s just playing games all day,” said Piper Weiss, who opts for dresses most of the time. At some point, she said, the Internet went from a mere novelty to serious business. “In a reactive way, style has evolved.”

James Hirschfeld, CEO, left, and Alexa Hirschfeld, President, pose in the Paperless Post office in New York in January 2012.

Paperless Post, a startup founded by two 20-something siblings in 2009, plans to move to Lower Manhattan and add 76 new jobs, making it one of the larger startups to relocate to the area that the city and landlords are trying to make more enticing to growing companies.

The company has leased 12,500 square feet at 115 Broadway, one of two landmark buildings known as the Trinity Center. Paperless Post is currently located in a 7,000 square foot facility on West 25th Street in Chelsea, and in four years has already outgrown three offices. Read More »

The small startup 29th Street Publishing is quietly trying to revolutionize magazine publishing, one app at a time.

The Midtown-based company promises to take the technical wizardry out of app making, easing the pathway to subscription revenue for those with eager — if nonpaying — online audiences. 29th Street helps its clients, drawn largely from New York City’s deep ranks of freelance writers and independent editors, develop and maintain simple apps for serialized content. The staff also provides gentle nudges to get new editions out on time.

“It’s the combination of the publishing industry shrinking, the technology and the New York, ‘get-it-doneness’ right now that’s making [this model] possible,” said David Jacobs, a company co-founder. The goal, he explained, is to help writers and editors “own and communicate directly with their audience. Also to pay writers fairly without compromising the quality of the experience.”

The proverbial New Yorkers who refrain from sleep may have been starting business: A report released Tuesday found the number of startup companies in the city has nearly doubled in the last 20 years.

The long boom in new businesses has been driven in large part by population and economic growth that has made the boroughs beyond Manhattan more attractive for entrepreneurs, according to research by the Center for an Urban Future.

But the numbers also underscore how badly new business owners were battered by the recession, which led to a drop in startup launches. Read More »

For the two entrepreneurs behind the online startup CourseHorse, the goal is simple: create a sort of digital course book listing each and every class offered in New York City.

Over the past four months, Katie Kapler and Nihal Parthasarathi, both 25 years old and graduates of New York University, have built CourseHorse.com into a database containing about 4,000 classes at 130 schools across the five boroughs. Their search engine is designed to simplify the process of finding classes in the arts — both performing and visual — as well as in subjects ranging from knitting to poker.

“We started the site because we realized how difficult it is to find classes locally,” said Parthasarathi. “You go to Google, and then you go to 100 different websites.” Read More »

The Walkabout is an occasional feature about notable New Yorkers and their neighborhoods.

Dennis Crowley, co-founder and CEO of Foursquare, walks from his company’s offices near Cooper Square to his favorite places in the East Village. Between stops at Luke’s Lobster and a bar where he likes to hold conference calls, Crowley explains why the challenges of making software in New York City help improve his product.